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March 30, 2007

Wee-Fi: Short Items for March 30

Portland's network gets failing grade: Not exactly a report card, Personal Telco examined the first stages of MetroFi's Portland, Ore., build out and found 50 percent coverage with 500 feet of an access point in the areas they tested rather than 90 percent. Portland has hired Uptown Services to perform its own independent tests. Portland's go-to guy on Wi-Fi said that if the network doesn't meet the stated goals, "it would have to be remedied." This isn't the first network of this sort that MetroFi has built, but it's the first network that's both large and has an RFP-mandated coverage requirement for them. MetroFi has a response: "Personal Telco’s own unofficial testing effort is clearly not independent or impartial, and we can only presume that it’s driven by their perception that we are a competitor in their local hotspot deployment project."